The Beatification of St. Russert of Buffalo

The 96-hour orgy of navel-gazing, unseemly on-camera veneration that attended Tim Russert's untimely death was not enough, nor was the accelerated career advancement afforded his son. Nope—now Russert's old NBC News office will become a museum exhibit.

The Newseum will display Russert's office "reassembled to look as it did June 13, 2008, the day Russert died of a heart attack at age 58," beginning in November. The only other journalist to merit an office recreation at the Newseum is Edward R. Murrow.

It's been more than a year since Russert's death, so by now it's OK to say about his memory what we were saying about him when he was still alive: He was a handmaiden masquerading as a watchdog, and the reason people went on his show wasn't because he was an "institution" or "tough but fair"—it was because he was safe and predictable but had the unearned reputation of being aggressive and relentless. But whatever: Let's stipulate that he was a towering genius. We're still recreating his office in a museum?

Here's what Lewis Lapham had to say on Russert's funeral, attended by all the grandees he claimed to torment:

Long ago in the days before journalists became celebrities, their enterprise was reviled and poorly paid, and it was understood by working newspapermen that the presence of more than two people at their funeral could be taken as a sign that they had disgraced the profession.

Anyway, what's in the office? A WHOLE BUNCH OF JUNK ABOUT THE FUCKING BUFFALO BILLS.